part of the woke methodology of reasoning seems to be avoiding anything on its face that appears anti-woke, and instead analyzing for sub-text, the dog-whistle, looking for virtue signaling or lack thereof. Maga types and conservatives and tradition-lovers, are objects of incredulity, whose behavior and speech can only be examined from the outside, not engaged with directly, (as we are engaged here so you are the exception).

See my conversation with Praxis - that is how it typically goes.

Woke doesn’t clarify what their virtues are. Not to anyone perceived as anti-woke.
Woke doesn’t address what a border is and why it exists.
It doesn’t believe that the race and nationality of an illegal immigrant has zero to do with the issue. Such notions are lies and cover.

The woke person knows immigration policy is about white nationalism, racism and oppression - it’s about winning political campaigns. No need to say “border” at all.

This is one example to demonstrate what I (and others here) see as a pattern, a way of woke argumentation and thinking.

Maybe, over time, and with much more discussion, it will help Mexico and Mexican people if we secure the border. That is an insane and insensitive statement to a woke person, a lie to hide hatred and fear, a careless indifference to the suffering of human beings. End of discussion. Before any discussion starts.

I am willing to debate and be educated, but such debate almost never, in good faith, happens. My opinion is discounted by the woke from the start. That has been the case all of my adult life (since the 80s). Trump and Trumpism hasn’t fixed any of this - he’s just shown the world how there has been no conversation at all before so many changes, wanted by a few, have been forced upon everyone. And to show that, he’s forced changes on everyone - using a bludgeon, like Kid rock used gun, to restart the conversations.

Let’s pretend we are all reasonable human beings who want what is good for all human beings. Even Trump. Even Maga. (Imagine that!!). Wokism, generally, wouldn’t allow any discussion on such grounds. By definition, if I don’t already agree with what is woke, I am asleep and unable to have a reasonable conversation.

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. (That’s what praxis said about me, as he shut down the discussion.) — Fire Ologist

:up:

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. — Fire Ologist

Right. :up:

The most acute woke vs. anti-woke discussion I have witnessed was the dialogue between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein mentioned <here>.

At 1:45:11 Harris says that every single male finalist of the Olympic 100m dash since 1980 has been of West-African descent. In effect he asks, "Are we racists or 'racialists' if we notice such a fact? Or do we have to avoid noticing such facts for the sake of political correctness?" — Leontiskos

Now the intellectually honest person who notices that every male finalist since 1980 has been of West-African descent will erect a thesis explaining why, and then consider evidence for or against that thesis. Not so for the woke. The woke immediately turns to post hoc rationalization, insisting that the outcome is due to racism. The only question the woke will ask is, "What forms of racism contributed to this racist event?" Anyone who questions the assumption that it is a racist event will be met with gaslighting and coercive behavior.

I just wonder why this process which sounds like it should be neutral as to outcome always yields the same political conclusions. Liberal wokism is the only result of postmodernism - how is such uniformity of outcome possible given such undefined unformed clay as “bodily, material and social interactions.”

It doesn't always. There are right-wing descendants of Nietzsche who also draw from Derrida, Deleuze, etc. as well as critical theory, although they tend to also mix in influences no one else pays attention to, like Evola and Spengler. For example, there is Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, Costin Alamariu, the whole Dark Enlightenment Crowd and the various "Neoreactionary" projects. Dugin and some other Russians might count; indeed people who are deep into this stuff tend to point to a lot of people who aren't writing in English. They are obviously vastly rarer and not particularly welcome in the academy, but they have been influential through other avenues, particularly in the right wing media space and through their evangelism of Big Tech leaders. Here, the groundlessness of hierarchy and values are precisely why they need to be forcefully asserted (not made known, but constructed and endorced).

There are also some eliminitive materialists (analytics) who pick up on post-modern theory. The science they rely upon to ground their eliminativism is for them a social construct, subject to all sorts of caveats and anti-realist arguments. Nevertheless, reality is at root difference, adaptation, conflict, and natural selection. Their theories are "adaptive." These folks seem to tend towards something like the "natural selection meets whig history" defense of liberalism.

Note however that a denial of "moralizing" is hardly unique to this area of thought. Nozick, as an exemplar of conservative liberalism, and Rawls as an exemplar of the progressive variety, both differ from politicians expressing either ideology in that they deny any role for merit and virtue. The "Good" is privatized and what is left is a procedural "right." The desire to bracket away the "normative" and a tendency to see the Good as both a private issue and ultimately irrational or subrational (if even real), as well as a distaste for moralizing, is more a generic Enlightenment idea, at least in the Anglo-empiricist tradition.




This actually brings to mind the epithet "social justice warrior." There is a bit of truth here, in that conflict and crusade are part of the ideological framing. Warrior societies tend to generate wars, and I'd argue that "activist" societies will tend to likewise generate social conflicts. If these are the arenas where status is won and identities are built, than one must "take to the field."

60s radicalism gave birth to a generation of yuppies, and the co-option of the hippie movement into a sort of consumerist hedonism. Perhaps something similar will happen here. I sort of doubt it though. 60s radicalism could follow this path because the academy still represented a viable career path for those more attracted to radical critique, and other pursuits like the priesthood still attracted a fair number of people who were oriented towards either the "spiritual" or "active" (charitable) life, while the path towards an individualist hedonism also remained easy to follow and hadn't proved itself to be "insufficient" within the larger cultural and artistic context to the same degree.

But median wage growth stagnated in 1979, almost half a century ago now, and economic mobility began to decline. The path to hedonistic consumerism closed up. I would argue that increasing earnings within a lifetime and a sense of "personal progress" are much more important to this way of life than absolute earnings. Meanwhile, academia and traditional non-profit roles filled up (and academia is now facing a catastrophe, as enrollment will actually start to dramatically decline). 1990s depression and angst replaced 70s and 80s hedonism (grunge and gangster rap versus hair metal and new wave). Secularism and relativism make building a life of meaning difficult. "Find a career that is meaningful for you is terribly open ended, especially when given to someone raised in the context of secular moral anti-realism and modern consumerism.

New Age and secularized Eastern religions offered one escape path here, but the Christian ethic of social justice and the ideal of freedom and perfection as the communication of goodness to others (agape descending, not just eros leading up) is pretty hardwired into Western culture, such that secularized Buddhist mindfulness can be found lacking in a certain degree of outwards focus.

So, there is a closure of other outlets, which funnels people towards social justice activism as their "worthy aim." At the same time, people are shut out of lives spent pursuing these higher ends because academic and non-profit jobs becomes extremely coveted and scarce, and the rise of the low paid adjunct and unpaid intern make the "life of meaning" increasingly class-based, in that one needs wealthy parents to (comfortably) support such a career. This pushes people aligned to activism as a "way of life" or "source of purpose" into all sorts of other areas of the workforce, from boring local government jobs, to medical research, to K-12 education, and particularly Big Tech. And then these become a site for conflict, because they are actually often set up precisely to avoid such issues, while social media reduces the cost to begin and organize activism (while also creating echo chambers).

That's at least how I heard a Silicon Valley CEO describe his and his peers' journey to Trump. A lot of these were younger CEOs, big Obama supporters, and tended to initially be quite open to the post-2008 "Great Awokening." But as it picked up steam (and because they tend to hire from its epicenter in elite universities) they began to face an actively hostile workforce who saw their employers as "the enemy" who needed to be wholly reformed from the inside. Or at least, this is how the experience felt to him, and he described a lot of hostile meetings, internal protests, etc. that ultimately soured him on the left.

And this is perhaps where mainstream responses to Woke are most deficient. Because of the anthropology that dominates modern thought, there isn't much acknowledgement of the rational appetites. Yet I'd argue that people's desire to "be good" or "do what is truly right," is, when properly mobilized, the strongest motivator of behavior, trumping safety, pleasure, or even thymos. When this desire becomes aimless or frustrated, trouble will arise (which reminded me of another article on the parallels between Woke and Evangelical Christianity).

Woke doesn’t clarify what their virtues are... End of discussion. Before any discussion starts. — Fire Ologist

And I am admonishing that clarifying the underlying interests is a process that is being skipped and is possible.

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. ( — Fire Ologist

I am pointing out we start arguing what to do before we understand what is at stake.

The question is not whether we can but whether we should — Leontiskos

And that is a legitimate question. If I can take it down a notch, what I am trying to address is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unexamined interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told on its face (on our terms, or, abstractly), as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it.

Anyway, another CT insight is that even resistance (wokeness or anti-wokeness) can be turned into a commodity in late stage capitalism.

:up:

Mark Fisher has a charming explanation of this in Capitalist Realism. But other theorists see this not as a property of late-capitalism, but of reality and discourse itself. There is no "escaping capitalism" because it is simply the structure of reality—a rather terrifying thought.

I think the problem is that the interests and needs of young trans people was created by woke culture. — frank

Is that any different than the interests and needs of gay people being created by gay culture? Onencould apply a Foucaultian genealogical analysis and trace concepts of sexuality to the formation and transformation of discursive systems. When did the Western concept of homosexuality emerge? When and how did it change to gayness, and then Queerness?

The question is: was this catastrophe just the cost of progress? Or is it a sign of something gravely wrong under the hood of wokism? — frank

Lobotomy was once a thing. But it led to progress. After all, we still use ECT.

what I am addressing is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it. — Antony Nickles

Sounds like you are saying fruitful discussion needs to first level set the playing field. Bring all the assumptions to the surface. Or that there is a pre-discussion about “unknown interests and different criteria” and “the terms on which to take it.”

That sounds right, but would also require good-faith.

Because it also sounds like a search for dog-whistles and unconscious shortcomings and ill-motives. We have to assume good-will in a person even like Trump (because he’s president, probably should be especially like Trump), when seeking to uncover the “so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it.”

Is that something like what you mean?

Lobotomy was once a thing. But it led to progress. After all, we still use ECT. — Joshs

We aren't going to be making progress on transitioning youths. Both the US and the UK (the two countries that mysteriously became manic about it) have realized that it's a bad idea.

At this point progress means waking up to how idiotic we were.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that wokism’s roots contribute nothing innovative or valuable to the canons of philosophical thought. — Joshs

I'm certainly not committed to the idea that all philosophy is good... — Count Timothy von Icarus

-

What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person. — Antony Nickles

Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious? — Leontiskos

-

It seems that a fundamental disagreement here is over the question of whether humans are capable of bad ideas. The woke, as well as @Antony Nickles and @Joshs, seem to lean into the idea that humans are not capable of bad ideas.

Consider an analogy. Human beings and human culture are, in part, ideational. In part, they are collections of ideas. In both cases the ideas are domesticated into a sort of garden. Now gardens have lots of weeds, and require weeding. The camp that leans into the no-bad-ideas direction is effectively claiming that weeds do not exist, or that gardens should not be weeded, or that weeds can be pruned but should never be uprooted. I think that's crazy wrong. There are bad ideas aplenty, and they should be uprooted. Indeed, I would argue that the very idea that there are no bad ideas is itself a bad idea. This is true even though weeding requires energy and constant diligence, and even though it is possible to learn from bad ideas (because evil is a privation of goodness).

So backing up, do bad ideas exist?

:up:

There are right-wing descendants of Nietzsche who also draw from Derrida, Deleuze, etc. as well as critical theory, although they tend to also mix in influences no one else pays attention to…
they have been influential through other avenues, particularly in the right wing media space and through their evangelism of Big Tech leaders. Here, the groundlessness of hierarchy and values are precisely why they need to be forcefully asserted (not made known, but constructed and endorced).

There are also some eliminitive materialists (analytics) who pick up on post-modern theory. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That makes sense it has to be the case.

I still think it is worth considering why such pluralist sources such as CT and post-modernism, vastly lead to the same progressive conclusions. If it was even 59% it wouldn’t be a good question, but it has to be more like 90% or more. Something is off about the PM and CT methodologies, where all of these more relativist/ pluralist thinking structures, like a funnel, yield the same societal conclusions.

(The pluralist/relativist baseline is why they avoid any sense of self-awareness of their own brand of facism and absolutism that can result when they have power and seek to impose these vastly uniform progressive conclusions.)

isn't it simply an equivocation to say that ignoring X and being asleep to X are the same thing? — Leontiskos

Yes it would be (a little sloppy of me). I think the distinction is that our culture may not be taking into consideration other interests (asleep to them), but “ignoring” them is part of how we address them, treating them as irrational, emotional, etc. without drawing them out, getting a clear picture of the grounds before judging them.

Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious? — Leontiskos

I get you, but I take it as the gig, as a philosopher. There is other work to do: political discussion, discussion of facts, policy decisions, etc. And, again, I would shift it to taking the claim as if it were made by a human whose serious interests we might not yet understand.

I think that if you try to develop these ideas you will find that they break down rather quickly. — Leontiskos

Well, I’m not the best person to create examples (which I would take corrections to, or others), but I stand by the validity of the philosophy.

Specifically, you think that to judge someone to be a racist is to misunderstand, failing recognizing that one is complicit in the systemic structures that caused their racism. — Leontiskos

I’m suggesting setting aside judging whether a person is racist (on any terms) in lieu of unearthing the interests and terms of our language and culture and our relationship to them and our responsibility for them.

Appeals to status seeking can be merely descriptive as well. It doesn't seem they are prima facie wrong. If they were categorically off-base, then it would also be the case that segregationists and white nationalists cannot be acting to defend their own status and interests. Yet that is, quite explicitly, what they claim and understand themselves to be doing. In their newer forms, they just claim that everyone else is also doing the same thing, covertly or not, and that they're at least honest about it. However, earlier defenders of segregation were much more covert about their ends, and yet I hardly think we can avoid the conclusion that these too were also partly motivated by defending their status and control over resources. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Concepts like status, self-interest, power and control can inform diametrically opposed positions depending on how the subjectivity, or ‘self’, they refer back to is understood. If we start from the self as homo economicus, a Hobbesian figure the attainment of whose desires need not have any connection with the desires of others, then we either settle for a Darwinian Capitalism or find a way to insert into this self an ethical conscience which we will not always be able to depend on. If instead we see the self not as an entity but as a process of unification, self as self-consistency, and desire as oriented toward anticipatory sense-making ( We don’t desire things, we desire coherence of intelligibility), then there is no i weren’t slot between the needs of my own ‘self’ and the needs of other selves. The unethical is then not a result of bad conscience but a failure of intelligibility. The unassimilable Other is found wherever injustice occurs (slavery, genocide).

Second, I think I'm the only one who mentioned fascism and the idea (Milbank's, although the seeds can arguably be found in Dostoevsky) is that the logical conclusion of the ontologies of violence is fascism. That is, when there is no transcendent order of peace, goodness, or truth, instead only contingent systems of power, difference, and conflict—when truth, law, and morality are not a participation in Logos, but are rather constructed through acts of force (e.g., discourse, statecraft, capital, language games)—then violence is original, and there can be no counter-violence which truly transcends violence. There is only ever assertion over and against counter-assertion, will to power against will to power (plus or minus some post hoc rationalization, which is itself merely another assertion of value). This is precisely the spiritual logic of fascism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have argued that the doctrine of nihilistic will to power is not a plausible explanation for the moral absolutism characteristic of wokism. Such absolutism can only justify itself on the basis of a realist-idealist grounding of some sort, which happens to be the stock and traded of Critical theory. I suggested in another post that the most noxious totalitarian tendencies of wokism can be moderated or even eliminated as more activists discover Habermas’s hermeneutical, communicative brand of Critical Theory and begin to leave behind the violently oppositional language of folks like Adorno, Fanon and Gramsci.

As for Woke becoming the dominant ideology the way Neoliberalism has been in 50 years, in 50 years China and India will be the world's largest economies. The EU in particular is on a growth trajectory to become increasingly irrelevant, and the war in Ukraine has shown that it seems likely to continue to underperform its economic standing in both hard and soft power. It would take a radical sea change for these ideologies to be allowed to get anywhere in China, even if they were popular there (whereas they are popularly ridiculed on Chinese social media). I don't think India will prove exceptionally fertile ground either. Whereas sub-Saharan Africa will be to that epoch what Southeast Asia was to the 90s-2020s, the main target for new investment and consumer markets, and there are a lot of reasons to suspect Woke would need to be radically transformed to have an appeal there too. I'm just not sure that it will make sense in these settings, and a look at how Woke analogs have developed in Japan and Korea might be a good indicator here. In particular, the Sexual Revolution seems key to Woke, and yet this is probably the number one area where thought indigenous to the developing world has said: "no thanks," and "please stop trying to force this on us." — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I said the philosophical underpinning of wokism would be mainstream in 50 years, I didn’t mean necessarily in China and India. China would first have to find a way to institute representative government. However, one can use the popularity of Gay Pride parades around the world as a measure of the rapidity with which new social
movements spread internationally. The recent one in Budapest even served as an anti-fascist protest.

At this point progress means waking up to how idiotic we were. — frank

Was lobotomy idiotic?

Was lobotomy idiotic? — Joshs

Yes. Have you read much about the advent of transitioning pre-pubescent people?

That has nothing much to do with me. What I'm telling you is they are not synonymous (which is an empirical fact. Wokists do not play out hte tenets of legitimate critical theory. They play dress-up to justify shitty, incoherent moral points of view (on my view)). You can say that you think their actions are justified under CRT and Ill say no, they expressly are not. I'm not personally interested in that debate because it is clear to anyone who has a clue about CRT that things like BLM (2019-2021 type of BLM action, anyhow) were not part of the agenda. We don't need some theoretical approach to notice this. I assume you've read the basic texts. There is no debate here.

If, on the other hand, you are saying that the basis for what's called wokism is something legitimate, so we should trying to tease out what that is - yes, but that has nothing to do with understanding those wokist actors. To be clear about the type of things I'm talking about - Tiffany Henyard, Patrice Collours, Stacey Clarke, Corrine Brown, Tania Fernandes Anderson (i sincerely cannot find examples of males doing this same thing. If I had seen/found egs, I'd have balanced this list). These people are corrupt and justify a lot of their behaviour with recourse to the tenets of CRT - and no, not explicitly: that's sort of my point. I don't think you can say people who do not know CRT are carrying out urges based on those underlying theoretical considerations. The chances many of these people (beside maybe Collours) are particularly aware of CRT beyond the ways in whicih is emotionally agrees with them is very low.

Rather, your unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness. — praxis

Is this to note an irrational position? This does seem to be a line towed by the Woke. It isn't reasonable, imo.

Another rejection is in limiting what counts as “rational” “argumentation”. — Antony Nickles

Perhaps. I am happy with my use of irrational. I think I outlined it? If it not, its to do with goal-oriented behaviour. If you have the information to know your action will not achieve (or, is unlikely to achieve) your current goal, but you carry it out anyway (without some special condition) this is irrational. I can't quite understand how we can use it in other ways without, as you, i presume, are getting at, falling into total subjectivity. Luckily, I need not comment on whether your goal is rational (because this would be hte latter).

I don’t think it is valuing one opinion over another, but valuing one person over another. — Antony Nickles

That's a lot worse, and less capable of a rational basis in my view.

We are not at this point judging their evidence in the decision but their value at the table. — Antony Nickles

Furthering my position above. If you are judging someone's worth based on either:

1. their claims;
2. your perception of them

I can't get on that train. If it's something else, please outline.

It is not the account of their lives that is valuable, it is their having lived in the context, been affected by the current criteria/practices, etc. — Antony Nickles

Where is the value going? If we don't actually care about the account they're giving, I cannot care about who they are. Because I can't possibly know.
The fact that people go through things isn't valuable at all, as best I can tell.

the interests and needs of young trans wasn’t in the cultural awareness — Antony Nickles

I think it's more accurate to say these "needs" weren't actually an issue. We treated body dysmorphia as it appears - a mental aberration. This isn't to deny that 'trans people' exist. But it is to deny that there is any legitimate basis for the claims made by trans people about themselves.
I would temper this, because different claims get made, but the ideas that one can change sex, or is born in the wrong body (one of these has to be true for the position to cohere) seem empirically dead wrong. The idea there is no sex binary, while auxilliary, is another reason I wont temper that claim ( it is roughly, universal among discussions of the fact of trans people). These are all of them banal and incorrect.

What if that theory appreciates, as Antony appears to, that ‘rationality’ can’t be separated from what’s being dichotomously treated as merely “feeling -based’ and emotional? — Joshs

This may be a reason why it can't be done. This is a cop-out and a dismissal of that which rationality points towards: Decisions made in accordance with reason and logic. These aren't superficial or subjective metrics. You can reject them as premises of rationality but then i suggest you're the new Sisyphus.

If this isn't how you view rationality, that's fine, but it explains my position at least. Unfortunately, and again, with the utmost respect, the rest of this post reads to me like standard prevaricative, deconstructionist discourse which has never helped anyone understand anything (it results in a series of questions that can't be answered, and generally run into each other). If i'm not getting something, I apologize. But it just can't be responded to in a way other than "What are you even talking about?" so I guess I'll just eat that and assume I don't get it.

The question is not whether we can [sympathize] but whether we should — Leontiskos

And that is a legitimate question. — Antony Nickles

Isn't it the central question, even in your own posts? Look at what you said in this same post:

And I am admonishing that clarifying the underlying interests is a process that is being skipped and is possible. — Antony Nickles

To say that someone is skipping something is to imply that they should do it. And when you the way that we can make their interests intelligible, aren't you really implying that we should make their interests intelligible? It seems like you keep insinuating the "should" question, and that is why I tried to tackle it head-on in .

If I can take it down a notch, what I am trying to address is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unexamined interests and different criteria — Antony Nickles

It seems to me that you are venturing the argument that the moral claims are only irrational according to a certain set of criteria, and that once we understand the criteria that the other person is employing then we will no longer view their claim as irrational. Is that correct?

When I say that wokeness is irrational what I mean is that wokeness is reliant upon clear falsehoods. I don't mean that wokeness is incompatible with my own personal set of criteria. Indeed, "irrational" does not mean, "incompatible with some arbitrary set of criteria," which is why such a word is being used.

Of course it is possible that we are talking past each other. It is possible that when I talk about someone who is "woke" I am thinking of someone who is irrational, and when you think of someone who is "woke" you are thinking of someone who is rational but misunderstood.

I am pointing out we start arguing what to do before we understand what is at stake. — Antony Nickles

What if someone holds that we shouldn't adhere to systems which are reliant upon clear falsehoods, even if there is a great deal at stake? What if someone holds that the end doesn't justify the means? I don't see that the critique of wokeness depends on what is at stake, and therefore it is not clear why one would need to do a deep dive into the "stakes" before dismissing wokeness.

I’m suggesting setting aside judging whether a person is racist (on any terms) in lieu of unearthing the interests and terms of our language and culture and our relationship to them and our responsibility for them. — Antony Nickles

I think your basic position is, "You must understand the woke before you judge them." I would point out that understanding precedes judgment, and therefore everyone who judges something understands it (to one extent or another).

So the question is this: Why do you assume that those who judge the woke do not understand them? All of us who judge the woke believe that we do understand them. That's why we judge them. It actually appears as if you hold that anyone who judges wokeness unworthy has by definition not understood wokeness, which is a form of begging the question.

So I must pose the question: How will we know when our understanding is sufficient for judgment? How will you know when my understanding is sufficient for judgment? What makes you think that someone is mistaken who believes that their understanding is sufficient for judgment? Your own judgment is, "You think your understanding of wokeness is sufficient for judgment, but you are mistaken," and apparently you think that your own understanding is sufficient for that judgment. If I wanted to reverse roles and take up your own methodology I would simply say, "You must understand the anti-woke before you judge them," thus implying that your judgment is premature.

More simply, it is not a rationally substantive move to say, "What if you didn't consider enough evidence before drawing your conclusion?"

• "Maybe you didn't consider enough evidence before drawing your conclusion."
• "Yeah, but maybe I did."

↪Joshs That has nothing much to do with me. What I'm telling you is they are not synonymous (which is an empirical fact. Wokists do not play out hte tenets of legitimate critical theory. They play dress-up to justify shitty, incoherent moral points of view (on my view)). You can say that you think their actions are justified under CRT and Ill say no, they expressly are not. I'm not personally interested in that debate because it is clear to anyone who has a clue about CRT that things like BLM (2019-2021 type of BLM action, anyhow) were not part of the agenda. We don't need some theoretical approach to notice this. I assume you've read the basic texts. There is no debate here.

If, on the other hand, you are saying that the basis for what's called wokism is something legitimate, so we should trying to tease out what that is - yes, but that has nothing to do with understanding those wokist actors. — AmadeusD

Maybe we can find something to agree on here. Let me say that there are a lot of crazy-ass wokist actions I’m not in a position to attach a CT pedigree to. But I will say that at least one Critical theorist, Theodore Adorno, espoused some positions that on their own merit are a bit crazy-assed, and whose interpretation by activists would predictably lead to the kinds of trouble we’ve been seeing.
So let me propose the following scenario: those wokists following crazy-assed doctrines fall to the wayside, and a new wokist moment arises based closely on the CT ideas of Habermas. No more pitting of power against power. Instead an emphasis on communicative rationality and hermeneutic consensus-building. Does this sound like a palatable scenario to you?

What I am saying is, part of the woke methodology of reasoning seems to be avoiding anything on its face that appears anti-woke, and instead analyzing for sub-text, the dog-whistle, looking for virtue signaling or lack thereof. Maga types and conservatives and tradition-lovers, are objects of incredulity, whose behavior and speech can only be examined from the outside, not engaged with directly, (as we are engaged here so you are the exception).

See my conversation with Praxis - that is how it typically goes. — Fire Ologist

My aim, as I said, is to try avoiding useless bickering. My interest is something you brought up: looking into the character of the anti-woke.

You asked me if resistance is essential and I said that I wasn’t sure how to answer. I think it’s a good question, if extremely broad in scope. I tried to narrow the focus to the Bud Light fiasco and asked, if you regard it as a form of resistance, whether or not pushing back on that was essential. I didn’t think that I needed to say that the gesture was inessential.

Do you think the pushback was essential?

Was lobotomy idiotic?
— Joshs

Yes. Have you read much about the advent of transitioning pre-pubescent people? — frank

Yes. Lobotomies were performed in the U.S. for 40 years, sanctioned by all the proper scientific authorities. What’s the point of calling them idiots? Do you call yourself an idiot whenever you agree to a medical procedure which has been approved for 40 years, because you can’t know in advance which ones will eventually be discredited, just as lobotomy was.

Of course the difference between trans therapy and lobotomy was than the policies were rushed into place before the chance for any society-wide debate. Did this happen because of the decisions of idiots, or because this commonly happens when a new conception appears on the scene which blurs the lines between the medical, the psychological, the sociological and the religious and results in polarizing political debates which draw in the medical establishment when they are not prepared to navigate the political minefield.

Is this to note an irrational position? — AmadeusD

It’s not irrational to reject another’s perspective, no.

Does this sound like a palatable scenario to you? — Joshs

Hard to tell. Habermaas is one of the least-clear writers I've come across. In principle though, yes, that's fine and preferable.

It’s not irrational to reject another’s perspective, no. — praxis

The question was more to do with whether or not you genuinely held that view. I find it to be irrational, so I thought you were highlighting something you didn't hold to be hte case. All good.

Concepts like status, self-interest, power and control can inform diametrically opposed positions depending on how the subjectivity, or ‘self’, they refer back to is understood. If we start from the self as homo economicus, a Hobbesian figure the attainment of whose desires need not have any connection with the desires of others, then we either settle for a Darwinian Capitalism or find a way to insert into this self an ethical conscience which we will not always be able to depend on. If instead we see the self not as an entity but as a process of unification, self as self-consistency, and desire as oriented toward anticipatory sense-making ( We don’t desire things, we desire coherence of intelligibility), then there is no i weren’t slot between the needs of my own ‘self’ and the needs of other selves. The unethical is then not a result of bad conscience but a failure of intelligibility. The unassimilable Other is found wherever injustice occurs (slavery, genocide).

Sure, you could describe it lots of ways. You could also think of it as a system of (perverse) incentives.

I have argued that the doctrine of nihilistic will to power is not a plausible explanation for the moral absolutism characteristic of wokism. Such absolutism can only justify itself on the basis of a realist-idealist grounding of some sort, which happens to be the stock and traded of Critical theory. I suggested in another post that the most noxious totalitarian tendencies of wokism can be moderated or even eliminated as more activists discover Habermas’s hermeneutical, communicative brand of Critical Theory and begin to leave behind the violently oppositional language of folks like Adorno, Fanon and Gramsci.

I'd place the main influence for the appearance of absolutism within the earlier activist traditions, which were firmly embedded in Christian and Islamic contexts, and made use of prophetic language. However, is "moral absolutism" really characteristic of Wokism?

I know some pretty Woke folk, and I cannot think of a single one who would endorse moral absolutism if asked. Rather, you'd get epistemic relativism and meta-ethical anti-realism. I happened to be in an ethics class during the height of the Great Awokening and this was precisely my experience.

Generally, any absolutism is held to as a sort of performative contradiction; the absolutism of Woke is primarily performative and volanturistic (indeed, both absolutism and negativity towards performative contradiction seem like the sort of things that are likely to get written off as a sort of cis-het-white-male-Western-etc. normativity, merely an assertion to be met with counter assertion, or even a sort of epistemic violence that tries to enforce a logical binary on expression).

Second, I'd be wary of conflation totalitarianism and moral absolutism. You can, and often do, see one without the other. Indeed, even moreso on the right, you see arguments for totalitarianism precisely because relativism and anti-realism are the case. Whereas plenty of quietist, pacifist, isolationist movements hold to a strong moral absolutism. Getting rid of absolutism doesn't necessitate a move away from totalitarianism; it can in some cases motivate the opposite move (indeed, I think the case in point is such an example).

Yes. Lobotomies were performed in the U.S. for 40 years, sanctioned by all the proper scientific authorities. What’s the point of calling them idiots? — Joshs

Fair enough. Wasn't your point that lobotomy lead to progress, and so is to some extent redeemed by that? And likewise, the mistakes made while transitioning pre-pubescents should be seen as worthwhile? Or did I misunderstand you?

Of course the difference between trans therapy and lobotomy was than the policies were rushed into place before the chance for any society-wide debate. Did this happen because of the decisions of idiots, or because this commonly happens when a new conception appears on the scene which blurs the lines between the medical, the psychological, the sociological and the religious and results in polarizing political debates which draw in the medical establishment when they are not prepared to navigate the political minefield. — Joshs

I didn't say the activists who ran the transitioning facilities were idiots. I said we were. The whole society took a vacation from reason. It's a drama that echoes the eugenics craze in the US. That also started with pseudo-science that was caught up in a campaign to engineer a better human. If there is a Spirit of Progress, this is its dark side.

I still think it is worth considering why such pluralist sources such as CT and post-modernism, vastly lead to the same progressive conclusions. If it was even 59% it wouldn’t be a good question, but it has to be more like 90% or more. Something is off about the PM and CT methodologies, where all of these more relativist/ pluralist thinking structures, like a funnel, yield the same societal conclusions.

(The pluralist/relativist baseline is why they avoid any sense of self-awareness of their own brand of facism and absolutism that can result when they have power and seek to impose these vastly uniform progressive conclusions.)

Prima facie, it didn't have to lead that way. Many of the early adopters of Nietzsche who rescued him from obscurity leaned to the right. I actually think systems of power, decentralized incentive structures, cultural biases, the systems of power inherit in careerism, and an oversaturated job market, etc. are quite good explanations here (which supports the original position). It's also worth noting that in the US context Christianity had held up remarkably well in comparison to the rest of the West until quite recently. Hence, it could remain a sort of "mainstream" custom to rebel against (even for foreigners, due to the outsized US influence), and our culture has a marked preference for iconoclasm. Anti-realism can suggest the embrace of custom on aesthetic or other grounds, but this line didn't suggest itself.

However, note that the emergence of a right wing (post-Christian) post-modernism skews quite recent. I don't think this is incidental. In bourgeois coastal society, and particularly in academia, traditionalism finally became properly transgressive. (I happened to be reading Origen and Saint Maximus at the same time as Byung-Chul Han and Mark Fisher and it struck me that the former two were by far the more radical and transgressive in the current context, and not because of a traditionalist absolutism, but because of their radical optimism, aesthetic outlook, asceticism, and total lack of irony).

At the same time, a new post-Christian branch of the GOP coalition grew in size and influence, meaning such theorists would actually have allies and support to pull on.

Getting rid of absolutism doesn't necessitate a move away from totalitarianism; it can in some cases motivate the opposite move (indeed, I think the case in point is such an example). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Totalitarianism has to lock in, to totalize something. Doesnt it totalize a particular value system? If one says that a radical relativist acquiesces to totalitarianism
because they sanction an ‘anything goes’ approach to values and ethics, how are the systems that are ‘ going’ their own way treated by these radical relativists? Doesn’t anything totalitarian have to get going and then ossify into a self-perpetuating structure? Isnt the indefinite temporal repetition of the same system or structure a necessary condition for calling anything totalitarian? If so, then an ‘anything goes’ relativist would have to embrace the proliferation of an unlimited multiplicity of diverse and incompatible totalitarian systems.

But is this way of thinking compatible with writers like Deleuze, Focault and Derrida? Decidedly not. Their method of analysis of texts, discourses and cultures is to
show that belief in the existence of monolithic systems are dangerous illusions that are nonetheless responsible for perpetuating all manner of social violence, repression and domination in the name of their preferred totalitarianism.

I suppose you could argue than the very claim that all supposedly totalizing, monolithic structures are composed of heterogeneous elements that don’t venting to the ‘identical’ structure is itself a totalizing claim. But if so, how does such a claim encourage or excuse the very totalitarianisms it is breaking apart?

@Number2018 @Leontiskos @Joshs @Count Timothy von Icarus

Sounds like you are saying fruitful discussion needs to first level set the playing field. Bring all the assumptions to the surface. Or that there is a pre-discussion about “unknown interests and different criteria” and “the terms on which to take it.”… Is that something like what you mean? — Fire Ologist

Yes, thank you. Wittgenstein will talk about investigating our criteria for judgment to get at our “real need” (PI #108), our underlying interests. This can look like destruction, as Nietzsche’s work is taken, of “all that is great and important… As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.… we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand. (PI #108 my emphasis)—Note: here he is looking at language, as it encapsulates our criteria, as a method (OLP) of seeing those interests—I take this as “level set[ting] the playing field”, to get at the actual stones and rubble of the situation before deciding what to do.

That sounds right, but would also require good-faith. — Fire Ologist

Yes, tough ask. All I can say is I am claiming that is our job, as philosophers, as citizens, is to bring about Plato’s city of words, to work to make the concerns of others and those of our existing culture intelligible, explicit. The gist of all this for me may be: we do not decide what rational discourse is, we create it, make it happen.

We have to assume good-will in a person even like Trump — Fire Ologist

Just to say again, I am not saying we are judging people, nor “judging” their expressions. I am suggesting we do not yet (have not done the work to) understand the grounds on which to have a discussion. That is to say, we have to give the claims of the other the good-will of a person whose expressions reflect what matters to them (and in this sense, rational, for reasons). Our first impression is to skip to judging what we assume those are without, as I have said, making the strongest case for what those interests could be. And, as you say, a politician is representative of our society, our culture, and so it is even more important to look past (judging) the individual, and also a different opportunity to draw out our culture’s terms of judgment and interests.

I didn't say the activists who ran the transitioning facilities were idiots. I said we were. The whole society took a vacation from reason. It's a drama that echoes the eugenics craze in the US. That also started with pseudo-science that was caught up in a campaign to engineer a better human. If there is a Spirit of Progress, this is its dark side. — frank

I think it is the eventual fate of all our best ideas to appear from the vantage of hindsight as the ravings of idiots. As my favorite psychologist, George Kelly wrote:

I must still agree that it is important for the psychological researcher to see the efforts of man in the perspective of the centuries. To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.

I think it is the eventual fate of all our best ideas to appear from the vantage of hindsight as the ravings of idiots. — Joshs

If it's inevitable, we should value all the more the restraint our conservative nature gives us: first, do no harm.

Totalitarianism has to lock in, to totalize something. Doesnt it totalize a particular value system? If one says that a radical relativist acquiesces to totalitarianism
because they sanction an ‘anything goes’ approach to values and ethics, how are the systems that are ‘ going’ their own way treated by these radical relativists? Doesn’t anything totalitarian have to get going and then ossify into a self-perpetuating structure? Isnt the indefinite temporal repetition of the same system or structure a necessary condition for calling anything totalitarian? If so, then an ‘anything goes’ relativist would have to embrace the proliferation of an unlimited multiplicity of diverse and incompatible totalitarian systems.

Relativism, even in its extreme forms, does not need to imply that we prefer or will all possible eventualities equally. Indeed, extreme forms of relativism are most coherent (perhaps only coherent) in the context of volanturism. "Anything goes," and "all assertion involves violence" does not imply "so we ought do nothing, ought not tip the scales in any direction." It can suggest this (e.g., ancient skepticism) but it need not. Any such endorsement of neutrality or "live and let live" would itself prove to be insubstantial, merely another assertion of one value over others. Thus, nothing precludes totalitarianism or recommends tolerance and pluralism.

As Hannah Arendt famously put it: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists." Orwell riffs on a similar insight throughout 1984, and Soviet writers have gone into depth on how this was applied as praxis.

If so, then an ‘anything goes’ relativist would have to embrace the proliferation of an unlimited multiplicity of diverse and incompatible totalitarian systems.

Why? Are they committed to some sort of inviolable principle that leads from the truth of relativism to this sort of open-ended tolerance? I don't see why they would be.

To wit:

But all these are only preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands something else—it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalize some great existing body of valuations—that is to say, former DETERMINATIONS OF VALUE, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for a time called "truths"—whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these investigators to make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything long, even "time" itself, and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride, all tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction. THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: "Thus SHALL it be!" They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past—they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is CREATING, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is—WILL TO POWER.—Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? MUST there not be such philosophers some day? ...

Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil - Ch. 5 We Scholars - Section 211

In NEW PHILOSOPHERS—there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed.

Section 203

Or also:

"What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity."

- Antichrist 2